Gossip Girl episode recap: 'Goodbye Columbia'

A rumor hits the Upper East Side that throws the entire Gossip Girl crew for a loop.

On this week’s episode of the hit CW show (Monday, October 11) Serena battles multiple vicious rumors, Chuck enrolls in Columbia, Vanessa has trust issues and Juliet becomes the scheme queen.

The main players:

Ever since Juliet Sharp came into the picture, she’s had it out for Serena. We aren’t really sure why she wants to take Serena down or how the prison dude is involved, but one thing is for sure—Juliet means business.

On tonight’s episode the battle between blondes heated up with a rumor that hit Gossip Girl about Serena. The rumor stated that Serena has a sexually-transmitted disease. This is not a good social start for someone who is trying to start over at a whole new school—and given Serena’s history, it isn’t a difficult rumor to believe.

Serena attempts to ignore the rumor and go on with her life and hold her head high. She knows it isn’t true, so why worry?

But some other people are having a more difficult time with the rumor than others. Vanessa, for instance, confronts Dan once again about whether or not he slept with Serena while she was away in Haiti. Dan tells Vanessa the truth and explains that nothing happened between them that night, but Vanessa just can’t make herself trust her boyfriend.

Vanessa confronts Serena about whether or not she slept with Dan and Serena immediately gets defensive and walks away. Juliet uses Vanessa’s vulnerability to her advantage. Juliet convinces Vanessa to come to Hamilton House for a party that night and says that she has a plan to figure out for sure what really happened between Dan and Serena.

So Vanessa shows up and at Juliet’s bidding, manages to steal Serena’s purse from the coat check person in order to get Serena’s phone. Juliet tells Vanessa to check Serena’s email, because if Dan and Serena had done something, they likely would have contacted each other about it. When Vanessa opens up the email, there is a message from Dan explaining that he wants to devote his attention to Vanessa and that he needs to make Vanessa know that nothing happened between them.

This revelation appeases Vanessa and she runs off to find Dan, leaving Juliet with Serena’s phone.

And boy does Juliet do some damage. Serena ends up trying to talk to the Dean of Columbia about how serious she is about school and her classes. However the Dean informs her that a meeting between them will need to be set up in regards to an explicit email sent to Mr. Lawson (Serena’s English teacher) which stated Serena would trade sex for good grades. When Serena hears this news, she’s dumbfounded. She tries to explain that she never sent such an email, but the Dean doesn’t seem to believe her and even throws around the word expulsion—which is exactly what Juliet wants.

But Vanessa overhears what happened and confronts Juliet, asking her whether or not she set Serena up and sent the email. Juliet denies it, but when Vanessa explains she plans to tell Serena that they had the phone earlier, Juliet freaks out. Vanessa explains that if Juliet didn’t send the email, she has nothing to worry about and runs to find Serena.

But Juliet, quick to react, manages to grab Vanessa’s arm, distract her, and throw Serena’s phone into Vanessa’s purse. And when Vanessa approaches Serena, Juliet interrupts and tells Serena to call her own cell phone to see if she can hear it ring. Of course, Serena hears the phone in Vanessa’s handbag and immediately blames Vanessa for all of the scathing rumors. Vanessa tries to tell everyone that she had nothing to do with it, but no one, including Dan know whether or not to believe her.

Serena manages not to get expelled and Gossip Girl issues a formal retraction on all the rumors. However, Serena mistakenly credits Juliet with helping her discover the truth about Vanessa and the source of those rumors. The two girls strike up a tentative friendship—which will surely end in disaster for Serena, since Juliet continues to plot against her.

And Vanessa decides to go and live with her parents for a while, letting Dan be alone. We aren’t sure whether or not this is the end of the line for Dan and Vanessa, but it looks like they have a lot of issues to work out if they want to stay together. I do feel bad for Vanessa—once again, she gets the short end of the stick.

At bat:

Since Chuck officially declared war on Blair, Blair decides to distract herself by taking even more classes and keeping herself on Columbia’s campus, far away from Chuck. She decides to enroll in a class taught by the powerful and prestigious Martha Chamberlain, and vows to be her teaching assistant for the semester.

But when Chuck enrolls in classes at Columbia and decides he is going to donate money to build “The Bart Bass Memorial Rotunda,” Blair is on the brink of losing her cool.

As much as she tries not to let Chuck distract her, her ex manages to continue one-upping her at the school.

When Blair approaches Ms. Chamberlain about the assistant position, the teacher explains that the position has already been filled—by Chuck Bass. So, Blair resorts to her powers of persuasion to get what she wants.

Blair invites Ms. Chamberlain over for a meeting and unabashedly explains that she knows all about the teacher’s nasty divorce from her husband, who left her to be with the nanny. Blair explains that her stepfather, Cyrus, is a prestigious lawyer, who has prestigious and good-looking available friends. What better way to get back at her ex-husband than getting involved with a powerful, rich, good-looking man? Suddenly Blair has the woman’s attention.

Blair agrees to set up a meeting with a specific eligible bachelor at the Hamilton House soiree as long as the assistant position is open. Ms. Chamberlain agrees to meet the man and it looks like Blair is about to secure her spot as the prestigious teacher’s assistant.

But, once again, Chuck wins in the end. See, one of Blair’s minions has defected and gone to Chuck with all the information that Blair has been using to win over Ms. Chamberlain. This gives Chuck the opportunity to sabotage Blair’s plans—and sabotage he does. Just when Blair is about to introduce Ms. Chamberlain to what appears to be a handsome man in a red scarf, a woman turns around and introduces herself.

Blair is surprised because obviously a woman was not who she planned to set Ms. Chamberlain up with. And it wasn’t what the teacher had in mind either. She immediately gets offended that Blair assumed she was a lesbian and walks away, explaining that the assistant position has already been filled.

Of course, Blair knows that it is Chuck’s doing. She tries to confront him to let him know that what he’s been doing is just child’s play and that she has plenty of tricks up her sleeve to combat anything that he throws her way. But Chuck explains that he has everything relating to Ms. Chamberlain’s life on file and that he can use it to continually one-up Blair in this competition for the assistant position. Ms. Chamberlain overhears the two of them bickering and comparing details about her divorce, and immediately decides not to teach the class, calling them both “crazy.”

When Blair tries to tell Chuck that he’s proved his point and that he can quit, Chuck explains that he will never quit trying to make her life miserable since she was the one who made Eva leave. He explains that he will be there, poised and ready to take everything important to her away from her—just like she did to him. And it looks like Chuck is even ready to play the Jenny Humprey card and finally let the cat out of the bag that he slept with Jenny. Because he knows that a fact like that would ruin Blair’s reputation and cause her plenty of humiliation. Blair calls his bluff and says he wouldn’t dare reveal that truth since it would cause them both mutual humiliation.

But Chuck ends up setting up an interview for Jenny with Tim Gunn at Parson’s School of Design. Warring Chuck sure isn’t messing around.

Warming up:

Oh Nate, you’re really not that bright are you?

Nate has officially fallen for Juliet, even though he doesn’t seem to know all that much about her. Juliet keeps feeding him lies, and Nate keeps eating them up. In fact, Nate is willing to believe Juliet over his old flame Serena, which says something about how serious he is about her.

So when the rumor breaks out about Serena’s STD, Juliet asks Nate to go to the health clinic and get tested. She says that he needs to get tested before they consummate their relationship—which is reason enough for Nate to agree to go as soon as possible.

Nate attends the clinic at Columbia to get tested and Serena sees him walking in. She runs over and asks him not to do it because it just fuels the rumor, which everyone knows is not true. But Nate tells Serena that Juliet is his priority and goes to get tested anway.

And while everything was going down with Juliet scheming, Nate was just patiently waiting to have sex. Really, that’s all he cared about this episode—and most episodes, come to think of it.

But could Juliet actually be falling for Nate? She keeps telling her prison cohort that she is just using Nate to take down Serena, but the man in orange seems to be losing trust in Juliet.

And at the end of the episode, Nate and Juliet get busy—making this whole relationship even more complicated. So what will happen when Nate finds out that Juliet’s been lying and scamming this whole time? We’ll just have to wait and see.

On the bench:

For like the fourth week in a row, Rufus and Lily end up on the bench. Lily wasn’t even in this episode, and Rufus briefly appeared to utter his cheesy, predictable parenting advice. In fact, Lily and Rufus haven’t really been much of a story this season at all, which is actually kind of nice, since the focus is on the younger characters and how they are interacting.

But I do have to say I’m disappointed that we haven’t seen more of Eric. Eric was briefly in one episode and there’s not even any mention of him anymore. We miss him. Bring him back.

Best plays of the night:

- FINALLY this show has addressed the ridiculousness of the main characters constantly switching relationship partners. It’s refreshing. Because as soon as everyone found out Serena might have an STD, there was panic. It’s like playing Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon—if one person slept with Serena, they all slept with Serena. It’s about time, the silliness of it all was brought up.

- New guy that Serena keeps running into (Hello, Sam Page) is super cute! We know that he also happens to be the English teacher whose class Serena has been missing.

- Nate: “I took a rule from the Humphrey playbook—we just talked and played Scrabble.” Yep, that’s actually in the Humphrey playbook.

- Finding it hard to believe that in four seasons of Gossip Girl, this is the first time Serena’s been accused of having an STD. The girl gets around. It should have been brought up at least 10 times by now.

- Chuck to Blair, who is holding a cherry pie: “I almost forgot how much I used to enjoy your pie.” Best dirty-gross-awesome line ever.

- Blair: “I said civilized, not lobotomized.”

- Vanessa is such a bad liar. We love how awkward and unconvincing she looked when trying to tell Dan nothing was wrong after she secretly looked through Serena’s email.

- Chuck and Blair actually interacting again, even if it is more hate than love, is completely awesome. The tension is back and we hope it stays.

- We just like seeing Nate without his shirt on. Swoon.

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